We are a joint family and we do a lot of touring to remote places for our business and plenty of times the tarmac is that good. Besides the formidable Innova we recently bought the Creta and the BRV ? both being petrol automatics. The BR-V is the latest entrant in our garage, while the Creta came last month.

After having the BR-V we feel that the Creta is slightly overpriced. The BR-V was almost a lakh cheaper than the Creta and offer a better, smooth and seamlessly shifting with its CVT transmission and is even significantly more fuel efficient than the Creta in the real world. The Honda also comes with steering mounted paddle shifters which is not the case with the Hyundai.

Safety and features are the areas where the Creta scores over the BR-V since the automatic is only available in the top-end SX (O) variant that offers stuff like 6-airbags, touchscreen infotainment system, 17-inch diamond cut alloys and others. However, the BR-V, on the other hand, comes with an extra row of seating (third row) and the ride quality is pretty much similar in both the cars, with the Creta being a notch higher, but you cave live with that.

In the city runabouts, the BR-V feels more relaxed out of the two courtesy to its CVT auto box. It will shift without letting you know and the drive is smooth and creamy. A lot of credit for this also goes to the Honda's legendary 1.5-litre i-VTEC which the City has been using ever since its inception. Due to increased weight and dimensions, the BR-V is not as quick as the City but it has an adequate amount of power (had used the last-gen City also). Similar is the same case the Creta as well since it is also borrowing the engine the Verna.